As Dave Chipping has pointed out, we really need to comment on the Draft EIS for the Land Management Plan Revisions for the four southern forests, Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernadino, and Cleveland National Forests. Out of the 6 alternatives outlined in the draft EIS, the United States Forest Service's preferred alternative--alternative 4--sucks as far as the protection of species and their habitat is concerned. Alternative 4 applies to the Los Padres, San Bernadino and Angeles forests. It emphasizes recreational use, and, it will free up more access to more backcountry acres for off-road motor vehicle use. There are 197 at-risk animal species which will be impacted by each of the draft EIS proposed alternatives in varying degrees Alternative 1 would threaten 10 species Alternative 2 would threaten 17 species Alternative 3 would threaten 34 species Alternative 4 would threaten 80 species Alternative 5 would threaten 51 species Alternative 6 would threaten 5 species As you can see. the Forest Service's choice of alternative 4 would impact 80 animal species--that's 40%--while our preferred alternative 6 would only impact 5 animal species. There are 287 at-risk plant species which will be impacted by each of the draft EIS alternatives in varying degrees Alternative 1 would threaten 10 species Alternative 2 would threaten 37 species Alternative 3 would threaten 16 species Alternative 4 would threaten 136 species Alternative 5 would threaten 88 species Alternative 6 would threaten 0 species As you can see,the Forest Service's choice of alternative 4 would impact 136 plant species--that's 47%--while our preferred alternative 6 would impact no plant species. As Dave Chipping has pointed out, the USFS is clearly side-stepping its role of protecting our forests. One has to wonder why: Even though the USFS admits that with their budget shortfalls they cannot enforce security in our forests they now manage from such threats as: illegal off-road vehicle use, trash dumping, graffiti, firearm use, partying, fires, parking and closure violations, their choice of alternative 4 in the draft EIS would serve to open up even more of our forests to recreational use. Let's get those comments or letters out, folks. The Draft EIS for the Land Management Plan Revisions for four southern forests, Los Padres, Angeles, San Bernadino, and Cleveland National Forests is open to comment until August 11. Ask the USFS to adopt Alternative 6, which is the one that CNPS helped craft. As Dave Chipping pointed out, we need to comment as individuals. The USFS now hires private contractors to tally up our comments. We can't trust that our collective CNPS comments might just be counted as one comment--it's volume that counts.